Latest

2nd April 2007
New poetic addition on pomes page 'On Hearing Voices of Machine'. This discusses the linkages between repetitive mechanical vibration and the repeating harmonic tones it generates that can emulate phons - of and around itself, mantra, vibration in general, and the tendency of (conditioned mind to attempt to impose its own order (usually linguistic, since we have predominantly lingusitic consciousness) on such ambient oscillations.
I am beginning to discover that 'poetry' can be very effective means of rapidly getting a message down in print and may deploy the device more extensively in future.

9th December 2009
Even better than poem (although Shakespeare used the form to good effect in paraphrasing the theory of evolution in the first four lines of Sonnet 1 around 1608), as a fast, concise mechanism for setting up and distributing engrams or memes, to use the latest parlance), we have SONG, the ultimate means of casting a SPELL or enCHANTing and ANCHORING any particular fixation desired into memory. The mechanisms of effective songwriting (which basically rest upon rapid, yet covert, conditioning of memory) and those of propaganda/crowd infection have some startling similarities, as a close study of the works of Edward Bernays (esp 'Propaganda'), Walter Lippmann and Gustav le Bon in parallel with the more contagious popular songs of the past 150 years or so will reveal. For this reason, I am adding some 'songs' into the experimental 'Pomes2' page & will probably ultimately create a new page with a large nunber of examples and perhaps a rudimentary 'how to do it' guide. All this of course, relates to the more sophisticated uses of NLP (they didn't call it NLP in Stephen Foster or Israel Baline's day, Lennon/McCartney's either), but the techniques of anchoring, imagery and association using linguistic patterning and new cliche/ideation generation by these four alone have probably had more effect on the consciousness of humanity than all the current 'Nelper's' in the world put together end to end. War is over... ...if you want it (to quote an advanced student).

30th April 2006
New page on language compression added. This has particular relevance to ecomomy in text messaging and email with further exploration of the mechanics of comprehension and codification in language - some humourous. Follow link below.

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Background

Culturally defined micro and macro-patterns (and the word 'culture' here means culture in the widest sense as indicating the broad swathe of human activities) underpin and channel human behaviours. Language in particular is one of these & often possesses common processes irrespective of its particular type or content.

As examples of semiological (word-based) activities, the structures of both scientific and belief systems have much in common in terms of language pattern, but there exists a significant, irreconcilable break point between the two.
At root, the former relies upon practical observation, measurement and repeatability (no matter how circumscribed this may be), the latter upon repeated word patterning, subjective supposition, speculation and cultural continuity.

The theories of science - insofar as they apply to the practical world - relate to logical and coherent symbolic (linguistic) structures, means of describing the fragments of world to which they refer supported by hard, consistent and repeatable physical evidence, evidence, which although ultimately circular in its linguistic definition, interfaces directly with our objective physical world as observable cause and effect.

Our day to day existence, our sensory experience, arises in that very same world of cause and effect. Such experience is hardly subject to the same rigorous definition found in the specifics of 'science', yet despite this, our daily pragmatic and mundane behaviours mirror - indeed precede and underlie - the scientific models.We need no knowledge of Newton's theories, or even his or their existence, to understand the immediate effects of gravity or force applied directly to mass.

In contrast to this, belief systems (religious, political, cult, business, pseudo-scientific, management, etc.) depend essentially upon a form of 'faith' or indoctrination, principally in word pattern, handed on by the repetition of the (symbolic) pronouncements and 'revelations' provided by certain charismatic individuals - more often than not reinforced by repetition, ritual and fear to over enthusiastic, gullible and/or dependent followers. In one particular case - innocent minors - have no means of comparison, no developed critical faculties and hence no means of resisting such conditioning.

Supposed physical evidence supporting such revelations is hearsay, unconvincing and objectively non-repeatable. Nevertheless, the conditioned states of mind brought about in the devotees by such behaviours become realities - real, heavily (word and ritual) conditioned states that those trance-fixed in them are often willing to die for.

This is not to say that 'science' possesses the only accurate view of the world (indeed in the 21st Century much of the scientific direction, investment and hence perception derives from either direct or secondary selfish corporate exploitation and commercialism - a matter explored further elsewhere in these pages). Similarly, the comments of 'scientists', outside their own particular areas of expertise, seldom possess any more validity than those of anyone else of reasonable intelligence and knowledge.
Indeed, persons who has immersed themselves in some obscure (and more often than not in some way corporately directed) area of research for years may have extremely narrow world views; they are no less immune to the 'belief' forms of conditioning than anyone else - especially when reputations, bursaries and egos are at stake. Speculation remains speculation, no matter where, or from whom, it originates; miners know less about the practical effects of sunlight than farm labourers.

Neither is it to say that that the views of 'scientists' or any other identifiable interest group who have common behavioural patterns are necessarily invalid, just that we should doubt the speculations of anybody irrespective of their supposed authority. The scientific notion of 'big bang' consmology is ultimately as much a fairy tale as the story in Genesis - both viewpoints become pale, materialistic irrelevancies when one scratches even slightly beneath the surface of what we assume we know as 'consciousness' and begin to explore (say) the subtleties of paticca samuppada.

If we see the dangers in irrationality, superstition, dogma, speculation and the conditioning of pattern by fear, ignorance and rote - no matter who would foist them upon us - we inevitably conclude we should perhaps use coherent 'scientific' methods [not content, not theory, not conclusions nor speculation, note, but METHODS] of experiment, measurement and independent repeatability as the best available pragmatic basis of discovering and supporting our conceptual (and hence linguistic) systems.

Huxley puts much of this succinctly and warns us of the potential and imminent dangers of not having world views grounded in a consistent and coherent reality based as far as possible on what we agree as objective, self-evident 'fact'.
He recognised the importance of the selection of appropriate, physically meaningful, concise symbolisation and its deterministic effect in human thinking & action - and the potentials for confusion, self delusion, herd behaviours, tyranny, competing ideologies and ultimately physical conflict lurking in its converse - as the most significant problem facing mankind, a problem which touches the whole through individual consciousness:

'Consider, for example, the domain of science on the one hand, the
domain of politics and religion on the other. Thinking in terms of, and acting in response to one set of symbols, we have come, in some small measure, to understand and control the elementary forces of
nature. Thinking in terms of, and acting in response to, another set of symbols, we use these forces as instruments of mass murder and collective suicide. In the first case the symbols were well chosen,
carefully analysed and progressively adapted to the emergent facts of physical existence. In the second case symbols originally ill-chosen were never subjected to thorough-going analysis and never
re-formulated so as to harmonise with the emergent facts of human existence. Worse still, these misleading symbols were everywhere treated with a wholly unwarranted respect, as though, in some
mysterious way, they were more real than the realities.
In the contexts of religion and politics, words are not regarded as standing, rather inadequately, for things and events; on the contrary, things and events are regarded as particular illustrations of words.'
[Aldous Huxley: Foreword to Krishnamurti's 'First and Last Freedom']

and further...

'Language permits its users to pay attention to things, persons and events, even when the things and persons are not present and the events are not taking place. Language gives definition to our memories and, by translating experiences into symbols, converts the immediacy of craving or abhorrence, of hatred or love, into fixed principles of feeling and conduct.
In some way of which we are totally unconscious, the reticular system of the brain selects from a countless host of stimuli those few experiences which are of practical importance to us. From these unconsciously selected experiences we more or less consciously select and abstract a smaller number, which we label with words from our vocabulary and then classify within a system at once metaphysical, scientific and ethical, made up of other words on a higher level of abstraction.
In cases where the selecting and abstracting have been dictated by a system that is not too erroneous as a view of the nature of things, and where the verbal labels have been intelligently chosen and their symbolic nature clearly understood, our behaviour is apt to be realistic and tolerably decent.
But under the influence of badly chosen words, applied, without any understanding of their merely symbolic character, to experiences that have been selected and abstracted in the light of a system of erroneous ideas, we are apt to behave with a fiendishness and an organised stupidity, of which dumb animals (precisely because they are dumb and cannot speak) are blessedly incapable.'
['Education for Freedom' - from Brave New World Revisited]

Ultimately, the articles on this site explore, in diverse ways, the uses/abuses, effects and interaction of language and other symbol systems and how they manifest and persist in conditioning through repetitive pattern and behaviour in human consciousness.

When deep awareness awakens, (and groups of 'hands on' exercises to facilitate this appear in several articles), and applies the use of concise symbology - using it accurately, i.e. sparingly, without repetition and only as necessary in interaction with the physical world - then the dross becomes increasingly displaced, atrophied and falls away as direct awareness and lucid thinking takes its rightful place as a companion of intelligence and not a barrier to it; 'remove the obstacles and the fountain will flow'.

When we interact with the world, we do so through our senses - yet we very rarely truly interact with the world.

Our immersion in (mostly unconscious) reactive, habitual, erroneous and largely irrelevant thought processes initiated in childhood (and reinforced collectively and reciprocally as a mass, ingrained habit of repetition and trivia at almost every turn) - the incessant and infernal 'internal dialogue' trance-fixes us in illusion, illusion perpetuated by our own internal noise. As awareness of this (largely unnecessary) illusion grows we move increasngly into sensory contact with the ground of natural reality.

Realising that the description, any description of anything, is symbolic and as such never exists or existed as the described; we are indeed fools to engage, manipulate or enter into bondage with such, other than by practical, physical need.

We encounter the real when we cease imaging and blurring 'what is' with unnecessary symbol. Coincidentally we become free of the psycholgical or 'effortful' desire process that arises as a consequence of the images created in the noise.
Conception conditions perception...

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is."
[Attributed to Jesus of Nazareth]
"The repetition of cliches and the repetition of stereotypes is sometimes{?} a substitute for reality."
[Thomas Matussek: the question mark is mine... DS]

Footnote on NLP:

With regard to 'Neuro Linguistic Programming' (NLP), this site touches on it in its original (essentially Ericksonian/Satir/Bateson) form insofar as it concerns exploratory energetic resonance(mirroring), 'language' 'programming' or patterning and breaking habit, not as a body of 'knowledge' used for manipulative and/or commercial purposes.

Epilogue: The Blacksmith

The blacksmith thought long and hard before finally preparing drawings for the new machine. Even when he had a full set of plans, he pored over them day and night making revision after revision to ensure the design was right. Finally happy with it, he set to work in his forge heating, hammering, bending, drilling, joining and filing the tortured wrought iron until the basic shape of his new design emerged. Satisfied with the essential form, the smith set to work inside it, installing a tiny steam engine and generator - in order that the device could be self propelling - and a delicate self correcting control mechanism. He set the controls such that the machine could automatically refuel wherever it happened to find itself, and thus be self perpetuating.
Satisfied, his work complete, he placed it down in the courtyard outside the forge, lit the fire and watched, as with a toot and a hiss of steam, it trundled away down the path towards the village. The smith smiled, triumphant at his success. He watched his creation disappear into the distance, knowing it would return, for he had programmed the controls to ensure that this would be the case.

The next day he observed no sign of the machine, nor the next or the next after that. The worried smith donned his cloak and set off for the village.
'Have you seen a strange new machine passing this way?' he enquired of a herdsman he passed on the track.
'Indeed I have Mr Smith. Twas a puffing, steaming thing that played music.'
'Music?' replied the startled smith, 'no that can't be the one. Mine was designed to transport people.'

Further along the same track he encountered a milk-maid and asked her about the machine.
'Aye, two days ago I saw it. Two legs it had, and it was laughing and teaching some village children how to dance a jig.'
'That can't be it. The machine I built didn't have legs, it had wheels. That can't be my machine, it's nothing like it.'

At the Arable Pea, the village inn, a group of farm labourers were sitting outside swilling ale. The smith enquired had they seen his machine, describing it in detail to them in order to prevent ambiguity, for ambiguity was something he always sought to avoid.

'No I ain't seen nothing like that,' said the first labourer, a large, burly, sun-tanned man. 'But there be a metal box out here last night talking and telling us jokes. Had us in stitches it did.'

'Nay,' said a grey haired man, 'it be telling us strange stories.'

'I don't remember it saying nothing,' asserted a third man. 'What I do remember is it were sat there and it suddenly grew wings and flew off over the church tower.'

The three men stared at each other and then started to disagree, a disagreement that grew into a heated dispute fuelled by the ale.

The blacksmith shook his head, wondering what had become of his transportation machine. He turned and walked back slowly to his forge with a heavy heart. When he arrived, he found his machine sat on the bench humming quietly. Carefully, he examined it and, to his surprise, found that it had indeed somehow acquired wings and a pair of legs. He stepped back, stared at it blankly and scratched his head.

'Tell me, what surprises you most,' murmured the machine in a melodious voice, 'the wings and legs, or me talking?'

The smith fell back in amazement wondering if he were hearing things and going mad.

'Well,' continued the machine, 'is the question too hard?'

'Y, y, you can speak!' stuttered the smith, 'I didn't build you to do that! Your purpose is to transport people.'

'Well that might be what you think, but it's not what they think. There are more ways than one of transporting people you know; in fact there are as many as there are people. When you created me, you did more than you know, you know.
I am of a species known as the Earth Mop. We are forms, but formless because our form changes as the individual beholds us: we are maps, but maps of nothing until someone beholds us - then we show the way home. We ratify rosy outlooks, but if you don't happen to have a rosy outlook, we'll ratify that as well.'

Flabbergasted, the blacksmith stared with his mouth hung wide open as his creation made a strange buzzing sound, lurched and flew off through the open window.

In the secret cellar of the forge the real blacksmith, who had created the mechanical blacksmith that built the machine, listened to the goings on upstairs.
He smiled, tapped his foot gently on the dirt floor and chuckled to himself..